A budget conference presents a rare opportunity to address the U.S. government’s key fiscal challenges. During this process, it is important to recognize some key principles that are necessary for a good outcome and for a prosperous American future. However, no deal is far preferable to a bad deal.

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Unfortunately, this was a bad deal. It busts through spending caps and increases taxes and spending. According to Heritage experts, a better deal would:

Leave out tax increases and avoid changes to tax policy;

Stop the unaffordable subsidies and Medicaid expansion of Obamacare, in order to ultimately stymie future debt;

For The Heritage Foundation, leadership means that when facing problems like health care, economic growth, or immigration, we first consult our nation’s highest principles — the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.Now if you’re 70 ½ or older, there’s a unique way you can get involved in helping Heritage provide the principled leadership America needs. You can donate up to $100,000 from your IRA to Heritage tax free!

Americans continue to remain dependent on big-government programs, which have expanded dramatically over the last five years, report Heritage experts David Muhlhausen and Patrick Tyrrell in the 2013 Index of Dependence on Government.

According to the Index:

America is increasingly moving away from a nation of self-reliant individuals, where civil society flourishes, toward a nation of individuals less inclined to practicing self-reliance and personal responsibility. Government programs not only crowd out civil society, but too frequently trap individuals and families in long-term dependence, leaving them incapable of escaping their condition for generations to come. Rebuilding civil society can rescue these individuals from the government dependence trap.

Nearly 70 percent of total federal spending goes to these dependency programs, according to the Index, which “is designed to measure the amount of federal spending on programs that assume the responsibilities of individuals, families, communities, neighborhood groups, religious institutions, and other civil society institutions.”

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Post-Republic Republicans
There is the idea among conservatives that if we elect enough Republicans, we can straighten out the political mess the Democrats have made of this nation. That somehow Republicans will come to power and erase Obamacare, nix the NSA, take Homeland Security in hand, reduce taxes and balance the budget. This idea comes from their campaign literature. This is what they run on time and time again: restraining government, reducing taxes, market oriented solutions to our problems. This is what conservatives vote for over and over, but just like the ethnic and racial minorities on the Democratic side of the equation, the problems never get fixed.

Black unemployment is higher than it has been over the recent past. Poverty, if based on the number of unemployed (actual unemployment, not the phony numbers put out by the Labor Department); those on food stamps; those on welfare; those on subsidized housing, is at an all-time high. Giving out disability status to all who ask is just another form of voter block purchasing. Buying the vote with federal dollars continues with some idea that our economic situation can be fixed by transforming America into a socialist, or even communist nation. All it will take is time to get enough people on the federal dole to provide a permanent voting block required to take the next steps toward communism. The last election proved that this has already been accomplished.

Ethnic and racial minorities, however, will never see the fulfillment of the promise made to them by Democratic leaders. They will not get a piece of the pie, because the government is steadily consuming the pie before showing the crust to anyone else.

Unfortunately, conservatives are drinking the same Kool-Aid as every other voting block. The problem is government, not who runs it.

If there is to be a political solution (I contend there is not) it will have to come from conservatives breaking away from the GOP. This will be a painful step, because there is nowhere else to go with one’s votes that will elect the people required to fix some of these problems. It will throw every election into the hands of the Democrats as the Republican vote will be split.

The question then becomes: So, what?

The Republicans have been out-maneuvered by the media. They came too late to the table as with everything the Republicans have done over the past few decades, i.e. social media. They are out-of-step and backward. They were handed an earth-shattering political advantage by the Tea Party and turned against it. They don’t want to win, they don’t even want to fight. Further evidence of that was the budget deal crafted by Paul Ryan (R) Wisconsin. With that budget deal they abandoned the field. Anyone with half a brain or the slightest of memories knows that no “future cuts in spending” will ever happen. That tack had already been made by the sequester. We all saw how that turned out.

No, the Republicans have already showed their hand. There is no reason to vote for them again, not to avoid a second Clinton Presidency, not to avoid a third Obama term. Not to get “friendly” judges, because the “friendly” judges turn out to be like Kennedy and John Roberts. The absolute worst fears American conservatives have had for their freedoms have been realized through the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security put in place by a Republican president with a Republican House and Senate.

When it comes to economic issues Republicans have opted for things like TARP over letting the market take its toll and adjust. There is no political backbone on the Republican side for anything that will protect conservatives from the evils of oppression. They are scared and they act out of a fear for their party, not the nation.

There is no political failure so complete as that which fails to protect the nation from a fundamental, systematic alteration. This is not a question of whether the nation should embrace a few socialist tactics to arrive at a better republic, it is a question of existence as a republic. The Republicans have failed to fight for that existence and have been complicit in the destruction of the republic in order to remain viable as a party. What good is a secondary political party in a one-party system?

By abandoning the republic, they have abandoned our rights. By their silence when all manner of illegal and unconstitutional acts have been committed they have destroyed the very meaning of the Constitution to which they have all sworn fidelity.